New World Hotel Hat Yai

... effort on his part, and was very nice, but I had to settle for the central train station and start pulling out the maps. After about 20 minutes of getting my bearing on the city I found the guesthouse I wanted to stay at. The room may be the dingiest one I've stayed in yet, with a squat toilet and what I think is a waste pipe running next to my bed, but its cheap and comes with a tourist office to book my ...

... Phucket much more pleasant. We returned to the bus station just minutes before our bus was scheduled to depart to find the earlier bus still sitting in the station. We had forgotten a time-change between Malaysia and Thailand! So it was back to the market and bar for another hour. Finally, we flopped into our seats on the bus and passed out for some of the 9 hour trip to Phucket.

... but intense football-style huddle, finally turning back to me with an enormous, reassuring grin, "One hundred baht?" So instead of the logical move - politely declining, not being so damn lazy and shaving myself - I naturally just smiled in relief, said "OK, great" and laid down on their reclining shaving chair. That's right, laid down. There goes Clue Number Two, flying right over my head like I was John McCain smiling inanely at another of Jon Stewart's barbs ...

... puddles, extremely bumpy path cutting across the island through the hills. I have to say I really did not think we would make it without crashing at least once or twice. My driver was a 40 years old very pregnant lady, she had my small bag in between her legs and I was carrying my big backpack. None of us were wearing helmets and we were not dressed as I would normally dress to ride my bike in the UK, so basically, all the ingredients for a crash were here ...

... at it and didnt felt safe about it. At last, we settled for what we already decided on Cathay Guesthouse. Cathay Guesthouse is quite alright, at least now we have a bathroom to ourselves. Room's not too stuffy and spacious, and we can do our laundry there! (: we walked around hatyai a lil bit and we quite circling around the same area and can't seem to find the night market. After much walking, we found this ...

... caused me to trap a certain delicate part of my anatomy in the zip of my shorts, which, as all you guys know, caused me to weep like a child- not amusiong) and we made our way downstairs to another floor. As we passed the room oppposite, we saw the reason for our damp awakening; the ceiling in the room had collapsed as the water had seeped through from (apparentely) a burst tank and it had fallen directly onto the bed. It was a damn good job we'd not been in that room at the time.

... life, he said, "Oh, well, you're American then." I just laughed it off at the time, but later on the subway, I really thought about it. He was the first person I've encountered that understood that I could be, not only Asian and American, but that I could maybe even be American first and then Asian second. I looked around me and saw the many Chinese, Indian, and Arab people on the subway with me. Singapore, like America, is a country of ...

So even before my very smart and educated sister pointed out I did realize that my life long love for Scooby-Do had clouded my judgement in the spelling of scuba diving. But hey, I'm good with numbers. Me no have the goodest grammer and spelling sometime. Malaysia was great and not touristy at all. We went to a tiny island for 5 days and got our PADI Certification in scuba ...

... a (mercifully) quiet passenger in our minivan that eventually made it to Krabi at 8pm that night, and the bird, well he was next to a petrol pump at a gas station en route. A little old fashioned perhaps, but effective in telling if there's any life threatening leaks. I should have opened the cage door... Next entry -> returning to Railay, post tsunami Words from the wise #26 "It's just a bunch of stuff that happened." Homer

... of the day. We went and looked around Singapore, which was a bit to clean for what we were used to, apparently you get arrested for dropping litter!, Anyways, that night we went out for a traditional meal where they had live frogs which they cooked for you, but funnier still the owner said we could marry his daughter completly free, how about that for customer service!